Archive for February, 2011

You love your 6G iPod nano right? So why not make it act as two gadgets in one, by making it a watch? There are plenty of watchbands on the market today that will let you wear your nano on your wrist, but most have to be ordered online or in Apple retail stores.

Well, if you don’t live near an Apple store, Best Buy will be carrying the full iWatchz Q series of bands for the nano. The bands are made from silicone and come in several colors. Best Buy will carry all of the colors and the bands will sell for just under $25. Great news.

It looks like the HTC Thunderbolt’s delays might be due to battery life issues. Verizon’s 4G phone is reportedly suffering from battery life that is so poor, it can drain out in two to three hours. Firmware was said to be to blame according to Engadget’s sources and there may be a fix coming in software.

Verizon has reportedly had to delay the Thunderbolt’s official launch date six times, which explains the multiple release dates that have surfaced. Hopefully they get things sorted out quickly and get the phone out.

We have been hearing about the HTC Merge for a while now, and now HTC has made it official. The HTC Merge will be available from several North American carriers this spring. It will come with Android 2.2 Froyo, and features a 3.8 inch touchscreen display, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, and a five megapixel camera with auto-focus and built in Flash.

The 5 megapixel camera can record HD video in 720p. Also on board is GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G. This is HTC’s first CDMA world phone, so feel free to roam around the world on GSM networks.

The new Acer Iconia Tab W500 Windows-based tablet is available for pre-order in Europe through several German stores for 499 Euro (or about $686). Seems a bit pricey to me, but then again I’m not a fancy European.

Do you have a spare Mini Cooper in your garage? If so, maybe you can make an awesome gaming chair out of it like Designer David Gawthorpe did with this halfcut of a Mini Cooper. It took two-years to do, but he stuck with it and the end result is pretty stunning.

It opens up to reveal a force feedback chair, speakers, a racing wheel, and pedals for all your racing games. There’s also a mini fridge, strobe lights and even a smoke machine. Beneath the seat there is an Xbox 360 console. It will cost you $12,883 (£8000) and it is in London.

Consumer Reports announced that the Verizon iPhone 4 didn’t make their list of recommended phones. The reason is the same as before. It’s the antenna-gate issue once again. The Verizon iPhone 4 like it’s cousin, is also prone to drop calls in certain areas, according to Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports says: “The Verizon iPhone 4 closely resembles the original AT&T iPhone 4 in many positive respects, including offering great multimedia functionality, a sharp screen, and the best MP3 player we’ve seen on a phone…Unfortunately, it also shares with its sibling the possibility of compromised performance in low-signal conditions when used without a bumper or case.”

Sadly we can’t head out to our local GameStop for another month yet, but the Nintendo 3DS had a launch in Japan today. Reports indicate that the entire initial shipment of 400,000 gaming handhelds were sold. Some of the lines were up to 2,000 people long.

But those lines were only at a few places as most Japanese retailers sold out when the 3DS went on pre-order over a month ago. The device is already a success, though that isn’t surprising. We all love our Nintendo.

If you were thinking about buying a $99 OnLive Game System, here’s some good news for you. If you pre-order THQ’s Homefront on OnLive for $50, you’ll get a voucher for a free MicroConsole and a free game. Not too shabby of a deal.

The deal runs through March 14th, and just so you know, supplies are limited, shipping costs extra, and you won’t actually receive the hardware until after the deal expires. It might not be a good sign for the company that it has to give away it’s console with this deal at such an early stage in it’s life, but either way you win.

Some people still have a love affair with vinyl. The sound of a needle over spinning vinyl is just warm and alive. Plus the album art awesome. Well if you own a bunch of records and need an easy to use turntable, Evergreen have just released a USB Record Player Turntable that goes by the model number DN-USB-TP01.

This record player connects to your computer using a USB cable and outputs the audio through your computer. The turntable also has analog audio output jacks for speakers. The DN-USB-TP0ill cost you $49.

SnapKeys has come up with a new way to input text into your touchscreen mobile devices. Called 2i (Imaginary Interface), they basically have done away with the keys used in an onscreen keyboard, and replaced it with just 4 keys instead. The 4 keys appear briefly onscreen so you know where they are, and then disappear.

When typing, you have the whole document in front of you, without an onscreen keyboard taking up half of the screen. We aren’t sure how this technology works, but 2i basically allows users to “blind type” their text in a fraction of the time compared to typing with other keyboards.

Math geeks who are also game geeks will love this calculator. It won’t help you with your Killzone game, but maybe you can figure your kill/death ratio with it. It is called the Cool Gamer Calculator, and yes it is a calculator in a shell that’s shaped like a video game controller.

It gives you all of the basics like add, subtract, divide, multiply, memory, percentage and square root. The Cool Gamer Calculator is available for $13.99. It’s the best of both worlds in one cool gadget.

AOC offers all kinds of lower priced TVs and displays and now their latest has surfaced. It’s called the AireLED Series. One of the more noteworthy features of these new LED displays is the fact that they are very thin at just 12.7mm thick.

The screens come in 20-inch (e2043Fk, $129), 22-inch (e2243Fwk, $149) and 23-inch (e2343Fk, $179) versions and will be available online and in stores like Best Buy and Radio Shack. All of the monitors share the same features which are 50M:1 dynamic contrast ratio, a 5MS response time, and DVI-D with HDCP.

4G is the big thing right now and everybody is hopping on the bandwagon. Everybody except Apple that is. An analyst from Telecom Pragmatics, Sam Greenholtz, says that the iPhone 5 will be launching later this year, and will not have any LTE radios and also that the iPhone 6 (to be released in 2012) will be the one supporting LTE.

Another analyst says that when Apple locked down the specs for the iPhone 5, they didn’t expect this level of hardware competition. That does sound believable. But if past iPhone launches are any indication, the exclusion of 4G this year might be on purpose. Well, we will see how it all plays out.

Microsoft has released the Express Mouse. It’s glossy white, egg-shaped and has a unique off-center USB cable to reduce resistance when the mouse is used on the right-hand side. As far as a mouse goes, they look pretty stylish.

The three-button-plus-scroll design comes in six bright colors and is one of the cheapest mice around that uses Microsoft’s blue laser to improve tracking. The Microsoft Express Mouse will be released in April 2011 for $19.99. Only gray and red versions will ship at first and should be followed by green, pink, and two shades of blue for a colorful June.

Your music is toast. Raise a (slice of) toast to your favorite song. This gadget combines two great things, toast and a radio. UK kitchen appliance manufacturer Breville has merged them into one device, the Breville VTT296 2 Slice Radio Toaster. It sports a retro matt black/silver finish and silver circular speaker. The radio controls sit under the speaker, on either side of the illuminated digital display.

It can store up to ten radio stations and comes with an antenna. You can also listen to music from an external MP3 player by using an auxiliary input jack. On the toaster side, it features adjustable twin toasting slots, a variable browning control, an extra high lift which ensures safe fingers, a defrost button which automatically lengthens the toasting time for frozen slices and a reheat mode.